Re: [9fans] Announcing Inferno for Android phones

[John Floren <john@jfloren.net>]

I know absolutely nothing about the n900, but let me take a quick look
at the wiki page.

Ok, I'm thinking that the n900 seems much more of a pure Linux device
than an Android phone--it runs a derivative of X, even. I think with
probably rather minimal hacking, you could at least get Inferno
running on it, hosted by Linux and displaying in X. The hard part
would probably be talking to the cell radio.


John

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Mathieu Lonjaret
<mathieu.lonjaret@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brilliant.
> Any idea how much work it would be to adapt that for the nokia n900?
> (runs maemo linux as native OS, or an half-assed android -nitdroid-
> with some hackery.)
>
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 12:32 AM, andrey mirtchovski
> <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
>> this is cool!
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 4:23 PM, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
>>> We would like to announce the availability of Inferno for Android
>>> phones. Because our slogan is "If it ain't broke, break it", we
>>> decided to replace the Java stack on Android phones with
>>> Inferno. We've dubbed it the Hellaphone--it was originally Hellphone,
>>> to keep with the Inferno theme, but then we realized we're in Northern
>>> California and the change was obvious.
>>>
>>> The Hellaphone runs Inferno directly on top of the basic Linux layer
>>> provided by Android. We do not even allow the Java system to
>>> start. Instead, emu draws directly to the Linux framebuffer (thanks,
>>> Andrey, for the initial code!) and treats the touchscreen like a
>>> one-button mouse. Because the Java environment doesn't start, it only
>>> takes about 10 seconds to go from power off to a fully-booted Inferno
>>> environment.
>>>
>>> As of today, we have Inferno running on the Nexus S and the Nook
>>> Color. It should also run on the Android emulator, but we haven't
>>> tested that in a long time. The cell radio is supported, at least on
>>> the Nexus S (the only actual phone we've had), so you can make phone
>>> calls, send texts, and use the data network.
>>>
>>> The Inferno window manager has been re-worked with cell phone use in
>>> mind. Windows are automatically sized to fill the whole screen. The
>>> menu has been moved to the top and the menu items have been made
>>> significantly larger. Physical buttons on the phone are now used to do
>>> many common tasks:
>>>
>>>    (these keys are for the Nexus S, different bindings are used for
>>> the Nook, which has different keys available)
>>>    * Back: Close the current window
>>>    * Menu: Toggle the onscreen keyboard
>>>    * Home: Minimize the current window
>>>    * Power: Turn off the screen
>>>    * Power+Volume Up: Open the screen brightness widget
>>>    * Power+Volume Down: Turn off the phone
>>>    * Power+Home: Restart Inferno
>>>
>>> Installation is reasonably simple. You'll need the Android SDK
>>> (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html), with the platform-tools
>>> package installed for the adb and fastboot utilities. We also strongly
>>> recommend installing CyanogenMod on your phone before
>>> proceeding--that's what we use to test.
>>>
>>> First, make absolutely sure you have the "adb" and "fastboot"
>>> commands in your path--see the previous paragraph regarding the
>>> SDK and try running "adb" to be sure. Download the tarball from
>>> http://bitbucket.org/floren/inferno/downloads/hellaphone.tgz and
>>> unpack it in your root. You should end up with a /data/inferno
>>> directory (we put it there because of the Inferno build
>>> process). Then, go to the /data/inferno/android directory and run
>>> the Reflash-Nexus-S.sh script (assuming you have a Nexus S. Run
>>> Reflash-Nook-Color.sh if you have a Nook). This will
>>> automatically set up the phone to boot into either Inferno or the
>>> regular Java environment--during bootup, the screen will go solid
>>> white; if you touch the screen at this point, it will boot into
>>> the regular Android environment, otherwise it will timeout and go
>>> to Inferno. However, at this point you're not yet ready to boot
>>> into Inferno, so reboot the phone and touch the screen to go into
>>> the regular Android UI. The final task is to run the command "cd
>>> /data/inferno; ./parallel-push.sh". Reboot, let it boot into
>>> Inferno, and you're ready to go.
>>>
>>> You can also clone the repository
>>> (http://bitbucket.org/floren/inferno/) and build it yourself, but this
>>> is a significant effort. I do not recommend it if you wish to simply
>>> try the system, but if you want to do development you should get the
>>> repository.
>>>
>>> Disclaimer: If you break your phone, it's not our fault. Don't email
>>> us, don't come knocking on our door, and don't call us--oh wait, you
>>> won't be able to do that anyway, your phone is broken!
>>>
>>> Credit where credit is due: Ron Minnich came up with the initial
>>> idea--we've been kicking the idea of a Plan 9/Inferno phone around for
>>> years. Our summer interns, Joel Armstrong and Joshua Landgraf, did the
>>> lion's share of the work of making Inferno into a usable cell phone
>>> OS--no small feat, considering that neither had any Limbo or Inferno
>>> experience before the start of the summer! They re-wrote the UI,
>>> puzzled out the undocumented cell radio interface, figured out audio,
>>> worked to make Inferno more portable across phones, and generally
>>> figured out how to make Inferno and the Android kernel coexist
>>> peacefully. Andy Jones, another intern, also did some very early work
>>> with Android that helped us figure out the Android init process and
>>> how to build for Android. I took care of getting Inferno running on
>>> the phone in the first place and have been adding things occasionally
>>> since then. We would also like to thank Andrey Mirtchovski for
>>> providing the OLPC framebuffer code (which ported to the Android
>>> phones relatively easily), and of course Charles Forsyth for keeping
>>> the Inferno torch lit all these years (and helping me figure out some
>>> puzzling problems throughout the summer)!
>>>
>>>
>>
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